"I'd rather stick to something more attainable. Like curing cancer, or eating the moon."

[larryhammer]

Department of redonklously adorkable: How mother otters teach their pups to swim. (via)

Jim Hines gives us the Spork Theory. (via)


[Poll #1579963]
---L.

Comments

[kchew.livejournal.com]

I confuse him with Shyam Salvadurai, who wrote Funny Boy. Apparently A Suitable Boy is one of the longest English-language novels ever published. Good summer reading, then!

[larryhammer]

It's quite tasty summer reading -- and it's been a while since that summer.

---L.

[rose-lemberg.livejournal.com]

Shahmenah

Did you mean the Shahnameh? if so, yes.

another just as long
If you're looking for epics, tell me which ones you read and I'll gladly recommend more. :)

[larryhammer]

Er, yeah, that Persian thing I keep misspelling. Which I started last year and got about a fifth of the way though before getting distracted.

I read a lot of epics. I've read the main Greek and Roman ones, of course, including the silver age plodders, most of the major English long poems (minus Milton) from Chaucer and Gower to the early modernists (minus Pound), and several French and Italian chivalric romances (including Orlando Furioso a few times). I've been reading up on the Chinese (RTK under way) and Japanese classics, and wanting to branch out into other Asian literatures (I've got an anthology of Sanskrit lyric poetry on the bedstand).

---L.

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

I'm just hoping for a review of A Suitable Boy.

[larryhammer]

I liked it quite a lot, when I read it back when it first came out. It's not even a slog -- just long.

---L.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_twilight_/]

Have you tried The Kalevala yet?

Also, otter pup=adorable.

[larryhammer]

Read it back in college, and remember mostly that it was long and inconsistent.

---L.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_twilight_/]

Yes and yes.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

D'awww, otter pups! I liked the comment directly underneath the video: "Mom, why are you trying to drown meeee?"

As for epics, I observe you're reading Romance of the Three Kingdoms. So keep at that one!

otters: not ducklings

[larryhammer]

So far, not yet a chore. But given that I've not read/seen any adaptation beyond the Battle of Red Cliff and so very sketchy on the story past that, we'll see how comfoozled and sloggy it gets then.

---L.

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

Gravity's Rainbow.

And otter pups.

[larryhammer]

But otter pups squirm away before you can read them.

But, good point on GR -- when I first tried it, as a teen, I didn't have the reading skills and bounced hard off it. I should try it again. *adds to list*

---L.

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

GR is hard going at first--like all of Pynchon's books, it takes a while to find the rhythm and get caught, but once you're caught it gets a lot easier. And it's a towering, brilliant novel. Along with "The Last of the Just" I think it's head and shoulders the best WWII novel we have. It captures not the war, but what the war did, what happened after.

And don't forget to keep an eye out for the puns, especially the line "For De Mille, young fur–henchmen can’t be rowing." Pynchon, like Melville, seems sometimes to write whole chapters for the sake of the pleasure of the game. (Cf. Moby-Dick, ch. 95, "The Cassock.")

The fur-henchmen are explained here: http://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/jokespuns.htm

[randimason.livejournal.com]

BUT MAMA I DON'T WANNA!
Shelly remembers going through that - until I remind her she grew up in the Seattle Airport. (Apparently there were fountains. I didn't see them)

You've read Buddha and 20th Century Boys then?

Excellent icon

[larryhammer]

Not yet Buddha, and I'm partway through 20CB. And a couple other 20+ volume series, and completed a couple more. (I think the longest manga series I've read all the way through is H2 at 36 or so.)

---L.